Agreement with the specialists: doctors are better paid in Quebec than in Ontario, recognizes Module

Photo Simon Clark
Not only the catch-up is completed, but the remuneration of medical specialists of Quebec now exceeds that of their counterparts in Ontario, recognizes the minister of Health.

Patrick Bellerose

Thursday, 15 February 2018 11:02

UPDATE
Thursday, 15 February 2018 12:41

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Not only the catch-up is completed, but the remuneration of medical specialists of Quebec now exceeds that of their counterparts in Ontario, recognizes the minister of Health.

READ ALSO: Quebec and physicians enter into an agreement-in-principle

“What these analyses here show is that not only the catching up is done, but the doctors and specialists, to mention only them, are in a favourable position compared to Ontario,” said Gaétan Barrette on Thursday morning.

The minister was responding to data from the canadian Institute for health information reported by Radio-Canada, in which quebec physicians receiving an average of 36 000 $ more than the specialists of Ontario.

However, the recent agreement between Quebec and the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec (FMSQ) provides for a catch-up of $ 480 million. This sum, assures the government, is to pay the staggering of the increases granted by the FMSQ in the previous years.

“The issue here, it remains a question of honouring agreements that have been signed. The logic is a logic of respect of agreements which have been concluded”, stressed Gaétan Barrette.

Forecasts wrong

If Quebec has to pay for these increases in spite of everything, it is that the agreement in 2006 – as Gaétan Barrette was president of the FMSQ – was based on a projection of salary increase expected for specialists in ontario over ten years.

“Nobody had been able to predict – because that is what we’re talking about, a prediction and not a forecast – that Canada was going to severely slow down the behaviour found at the time,” says Gaétan Barrette. And it is this fact that doctors in quebec are found in the current position.”

“As for the agreement that was entered into contractually, and did not provide for reopening of these contracts-there, ben is where it is today”, added the minister.

New money

Contrary to what he affirmed the day before, and said that the prime minister earlier this week, the minister Barrette acknowledges that the agreement with the FMSQ plans of “new money”.

Additional amounts are provided to operate the medical imaging devices at full speed, which sometimes work only half the time. This money will be used to pay the doctors, fee-for-service, who operate the devices of magnetic resonance or computed tomography (ct) scans.

“Clearly, there is an additional envelope,” admitted the minister Barrette.

The day before, the prime minister had also conceded that the agreement, which runs from 2015 to 2023, provides for an average annual increase of 1.4%.

Kept confidential until now, the agreement with the FMSQ is expected to be unveiled tomorrow.

The president of the treasury Board, Pierre Arcand, has also said in the blue Room as it will allow the government “to control the increase of salaries of doctors”, in addition to contain clauses “that will certainly save billions of dollars in the future to Quebecers”.